Chapter 7
After finishing another painfully dry dinner as usual, Chloe entered her room.
So, the culprit who had left flowers by the bedroom door was the adopted child who was supposed to be abandoned.
I told them to bring her to my room beforehand.
But the child was nowhere to be seen.
“Did she run away?”
It was understandable.
Every child was afraid of her.
Apparently, the saying, “If you cry, the Dark Witch will come and take you away!” was popular among the people.
Chloe stroked her pitch-black hair, as dark as darkness itself, and muttered,
“…It doesn’t matter even if she ran away.”
If that suspicious child had gotten scared and run away on her own, it was actually for the best.
……Besides, after examining the purple flowers, she had found nothing wrong with them.
She had been angry at first, but soon, everything became bothersome.
Just as she thought that, she suddenly felt something strange in her neatly arranged room.
“Sunlight……”
Warm sunlight entered through the open window along with the gentle spring breeze.
Why all of a sudden?
The maids thought that Chloe, a dark mage, hated light.
So they always kept dark curtains drawn over the windows.
But today was different.
Without realizing it, Chloe walked toward the window.
On the windowsill was a small vase filled with lily of the valley.
[There is a superstition that lily of the valley drives away evil spirits.]
“What is this……?”
At that moment, Chloe heard a sound beside her ear.
Purr, purr.
It sounded like someone smacking their lips sleepily.
Ah, Coco used to make that sound.
And then—
“Chomp.”
“……”
“Go…… sweet potato……”
In front of the bedroom door where Coco used to wait for her alone every night,
there was a child lying down in the same position Coco used to sleep in.
Is she asleep?
Chloe shook the shoulder of the child who was sleeping pitifully in the same position.
Perhaps because she saw Coco overlapping with the child, she was unusually flustered and forgot that she had intended to get angry.
“Wake up.”
When the tiny child barely lifted her eyelids,
their eyes finally met.
Purple eyes.
My heart……
It felt as if her heart had made a loud thud and fallen to the floor.
What is this? Why am I like this?
While Chloe hesitated, the child suddenly jumped to her feet.
“Wow!”
“……What are you?”
There was only one reason Chloe stammered without realizing it.
She had wondered every day what Coco’s voice would sound like if Coco became human.
And the little child standing before her suddenly shouted cheerfully in exactly the voice she had imagined all this time.
“I am!”
“……What?”
Chloe’s confused eyes trembled.
The little girl smiled brightly and waved her hand.
“I’m Coco!”
“……What did you say?”
The child’s eyes quickly became gloomy.
“Gasp. I-I was just like usual…… and you still don’t recognize me……”
“What do you mean?”
Not only was she saying things Chloe couldn’t understand, but she was also making a dejected face.
I haven’t even said anything yet.
This child was behaving in a way Chloe couldn’t understand.
The little girl finally stopped pouting like a duck and lowered her head.
“Gasp. N-never mind. H-hello! I’m Coco!”
“……Coco?”
Chloe’s confused eyes trembled again.
The little girl smiled brightly and waved her hand.
“Yes! My name is Coco!”
“……Ah, so your name is Coco.”
She remembered the profile of the adopted child.
She had been too busy investigating the child’s background to check her name.
Chloe spoke dryly.
“I have finished investigating you.”
“Gasp! You recognized me?”
……What?
Why was she happy that Chloe had investigated her background?
Why?
The child even wiggled her hips as if she had an invisible tail to wag.
And why were her eyes sparkling like that?
No one has ever reacted like this when looking at me before.
Chloe felt as if she were being dragged into the child’s rhythm.
“Then let me ask you. Why did you recklessly enter someone else’s bedroom?”
At that moment, the child straightened her shoulders and looked up at Chloe.
She wasn’t even trembling despite meeting Chloe’s eyes.
Her eyes were filled with an astonishing amount of warmth.
“Were you never taught the basic manners that you should not enter another person’s private residence?”
“Gasp…… I-I wasn’t taught those manners……”
The child made a completely clueless expression.
My head hurts.
Well, she had been told that the child was an adopted commoner, so it was understandable that she didn’t know proper etiquette.
“Why did you bring the flowers?”
“Ah! The flowers? There were so many of them in the grass nearby, and they were so, so pretty, so I picked them and brought them here!”
“……”
“Gasp, was I not supposed to bring flowers either……?”
The child rolled her eyes around anxiously.
Chloe pressed her fingers against her temple.
Come to think of it, the purple flowers Coco liked were blooming everywhere around the annex. And since she had even picked lily of the valley, it seemed the child simply loved flowers.
“……I don’t like flowers. And bringing flowers into a stranger’s room is not proper manners.”
“A stranger……”
A faint sadness appeared on the child’s face.
But only for a moment.
The child stared directly into Chloe’s eyes and smiled as brightly as sunlight.
“I just wanted to become friends with you, Lady Chloe!”
“Why? Pretending to be friendly with me won’t do you any good. Your fate will be decided by my father and the elders.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it?”
“Because Lady Chloe is so cool.”
Those were the words of a child who would soon be thrown out of the family.
But Chloe was confused.
She had never heard a child admire her and call her cool before.
“……What?”
The child tightly grabbed her clothes and her eyes sparkled.
“Um, actually, I saw you in the newspaper! Lady Chloe, you seemed like such an incredibly powerful dark mage!”
“That can’t be. The newspapers would never say anything good about me.”
Actually, I knew that very well.
There was no way the newspapers would say anything good about Sister Chloe.
“You know, Coco. My fiancé doesn’t like me.”
“Munch, munch.”
“……Besides my fiancé, everyone else hates me too.”
“Huh?”
“They say they hate me because I’m a dark mage. They even say Mother died young because of me……”
When I was Coco the dog, I couldn’t say a single word.
All I could do was bark, woof, woof, as if trying to comfort her.
But now, I can speak.
Sister was the only person who ever reached out her hand to me.
That’s why I’m not afraid of Sister at all!
I made my eyes sparkle with all the love in my heart.
“I saw the picture in the newspaper! The one where Lady Chloe uses dark magic. It looked so, so cool!”
“What exactly is so cool about that……”
“The newspapers keep making it seem like light is cooler than darkness. But, um, I think the warm sunlight is loved because of darkness!”
“What?”
“You can only meet warm sunlight when there is darkness. So Lady Chloe is cool! As cool as sunlight, no, even cooler than sunlight!”
Sister stepped back with a flustered expression.
“……Darkness is simply darkness.”
The tips of Sister’s fingers twitched for a moment.
Then, pitch-black darkness began to rise from them.
Was she trying to scare me?
But I wasn’t scared at all.
“Gasp! It’s sooo cool! It’s like there’s a beautiful night sky packed inside your fingertips!”
Sister gave a low laugh with an incredulous expression and asked,
“……Are you serious?”
I looked at her warmly.
And finally, I met Sister’s blade-like gaze.
“Yes, I’m serious. You’re the only person who can make a night sky with your fingers, aren’t you, Lady Chloe?”
Sister’s expression wavered for a moment.
I looked at her hair glowing under the sunlight and at her lips, which had always spoken warm words to me.
Does Sister want to become friends with me now too?
My heart pounded wildly.
But only for a moment.
“Even so, don’t come to my estate.”
Sister turned her gaze away.
“I don’t like meeting people. It’s tiring. Soon, I’ll close the doors of the Haeguk Estate completely.”
It was a perfect rejection.
I worked so, so hard because I wanted to become close to Sister again.
I had struggled to open the window with my weak hands.
I prepared flowers.
I waited in Sister’s favorite position.
I even poured out all my wonderful words one after another……
But is it still not enough?
Unlike a brave puppy, I felt like I was going to cry.
I gathered all the courage I had and quietly murmured,
“Then, I’ll just stay beside you for a little bit so you won’t get tired, Lady Chloe.”
“……”
“I can move around by myself! My hands and feet are really strong too……”
I remembered the summer before I died.
I used to be a weak, troublesome dog.
Sister used to massage my body every day because it would grow cold and stiff.
Sister must have been tired and annoyed from taking care of me.
But now, I don’t need her to give me those troublesome massages anymore.
I pointed at my soft calf.
“I don’t have big, strong muscles, but I’m really healthy now, and I’m strong! I can walk much farther than before, too!”
Sister’s expression was still displeased.
“And, um, I don’t have a dislocated kneecap anymore……”
I timidly added the words I’d heard the veterinarians mutter all the time while looking at me, even though I didn’t really know what they meant.
Still, no answer came.
Even more flustered, I tried to study Sister’s expression.
Does she not believe me?
I quickly raised my short little hand.
Then I drew the biggest circle I could.
“I’m this strong!”
I have wonderful hands now that can pat Sister’s back.
I also have two healthy little feet that can walk hard, even if they’re small.
And I have a mouth that can scold anyone who says bad things to Sister.
I can make Sister smile.
So, please……
“Th-then…… I can come visit sometimes, right? Just sometimes. Very, very rarely……?”
Can you please become friends with me again?
